BOOK TALK WITH GEORGE N. SHIRINIAN

“This comprehensive volume is the first to broadly examine the genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in comparative fashion, analyzing the similarities and differences among them and giving crucial context to present-day calls for recognition. It is also one of the rare books which investigates the fate of the Ottoman Christian people during World War I as a whole, as not only Armenians, but Greeks and Assyrians were also targeted by the genocide carried out by the Young Turk’s Ottoman Government. In the shadow of World War I, the Young Turk’s aim was to exterminate the entire Christian population.” · Assyrian International News Agency News

The final years of the Ottoman Empire were catastrophic ones for its non-Turkish, non-Muslim minorities. From 1913 to 1923, its rulers deported, killed, or otherwise persecuted staggering numbers of citizens in an attempt to preserve “Turkey for the Turks,” setting a modern precedent for how a regime can commit genocide in pursuit of political ends while largely escaping accountability. While this brutal history is most widely known in the case of the Armenian genocide, few appreciate the extent to which the Empire’s Assyrian and Greek subjects suffered and died under similar policies. This comprehensive volume is the first to broadly examine the genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in comparative fashion, analyzing the similarities and differences among them and giving crucial context to present-day calls for recognition.

GEORGE N. SHIRINIAN is Executive Director of the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (a division of the Zoryan Institute). His publications include Studies in Comparative Genocide and The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1913–1923. His articles include “Turks who saved Armenians: Righteous Muslims during the Armenian Genocide”, and “Starvation and its political use in the Armenian Genocide”.